The present invention relates to an apparatus for orienting packages of textile material in response to sensing of the initial orientation of the packages.
It is known to supply packages of textile material to a textile machine such as, for example, a textile winding machine by a supply arrangement in which the packages are transported in random orientations. Typically, all of the delivered packages must be oriented into the same predetermined orientation for successful winding or unwinding of yarn therefrom at the textile winding machine. The challenge of properly orienting the packages arises in those situations in which the packages comprise textile material built on a tube which has one end of a different diameter than its other end. In this situation, if, for example, the predetermined orientation of the packages is an orientation in which the larger diameter tube end is to be more remote than the lesser diameter tube end relative to the direction in which the textile material or yarn is drawn off of the package, an orienting apparatus must be provided to insure that each of the packages (which are delivered with their tube ends in random orientations) are uniformly oriented with their respective tube ends in the same predetermined orientation as the other packages.
German Patent Document DE-OS 33 45 825 discloses an apparatus in which randomly oriented packages are initially delivered by a package conveyor which advances the packages by vibration. Another component of the apparatus downstream from the vibrating package conveyor orients the packages in a predetermined orientation such as, for example, a vertical orientation with the same selected greater or lesser diameter tube end in the lower position. As required, the orienting component must move some of the packages through a predetermined movement to bring the proper greater or lesser diameter tube end of the package into the proper orientation and, for this reason, the cyclic operating time for such orienting apparatus typically are the highest among the elements which supply the packages to the textile machine, thereby creating a bottleneck. Accordingly, the need still exists for a package orienting apparatus which substantially reduces the time required to re-orient a package delivered in a random orientation into a predetermined orientation.